Read Running from the Devil for Free Online

remained of the first-class cabin but wreckage and twisted metal. She avoided looking in the cockpit. She didn’t want to know what happened to the pilot with the smooth voice that never shook, professional to the end.
    She rooted around the tree line by the nose and found useless debris and charred bodies, many still strapped into their seats. The stench of the dead permeated the air. It was a good thing that she hadn’t eaten in a day, because she would have thrown up at the sight of the dead. As it was, acid saliva was all she tasted.
    A food cart, blackened and bent, lay on its side about thirty feet from the edge of the landing strip. Dead bodies surrounded it. The bodies created a macabre maze that Emma would have to navigate to reach the prize. Once there, she would have to work on the cart while the bodies kept her company. She forced herself to think about survival.
    Emma took careful steps over the bodies of three passengers. She turned her eyes from their faces and did her best to focus on the goal of reaching the cart. Two more bodies lay on either side of the metal box. She stepped over one’s leg, and this step brought her flush up against the box. She had no room to maneuver, however, without moving the other body out of the way.
    It looked to be a man, badly burned. She nudged it with her toe. It rocked but didn’t move far enough to give her any room. She tried to push it again, but it again rocked and fell back into position against the cart. In a fit of exasperation and gnawing hunger, Emma bent her knees, leaned the small of her back on the cart, bracing herself against it, and put one foot on the corpse. She shoved it as hard as she could. It rolled over one complete rotation before stopping a foot away.
    Emma grabbed the door of the cart and yanked it open. Food packets tumbled out. She pounced on them. Her hands shook as she sorted through the scorched packets. She fought with one, trying to pry the aluminum lid off the shallow plastic container that acted as a plate. She ripped it open and looked inside.
    The plastic plate had melted onto the food and then hardened into one congealed mess once it cooled. Emma couldn’t tell where the plastic ended and the food began.
    Oh no. I need this food, Emma thought.
    She tossed the ruined plate and grabbed the next one. Same congealed mess. She grabbed a third, also inedible. She clawed at a fourth. This time when she removed the foil she found an intact filet mignon, side salad, and baby carrots, all nestled in their own little sections.
    Emma grabbed the filet and shoved it in her mouth, ripping off a section with her teeth. It tasted like heaven. She couldn’t chew it fast enough. She swallowed a large portion whole and ripped at the filet again. She chewed twice before raising her eyes.
    She glanced at a nearby corpse. It was a woman. Her eyes gazed at Emma in an unblinking stare. Emma stopped chewing and felt her stomach start to rebel. She closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. Keeping the food down was imperative. After her stomach settled, she opened her eyes and looked at the dead woman.
    “I’m so sorry.” Emma whispered the words.
    An overwhelming sadness settled over her. She got up, still clutching the food plate, and stumbled away from the body and the woman’s lifeless eyes. She sank down near her pack and finished the filet, all the while doing her best to keep her gaze off the destruction all around her.
    When she was finished she made her way back to the cart and fished through the plates. Out of fifty or sixty packets, she found ten still intact. She grabbed them and carried them to her backpack.
    She sat at the end of the runway and stacked the few precious food plates next to her pack along with a small parcel of airline napkins. She’d brought the pack, a compass, compact tent, bedroll, and a portable Coleman stove. Only the pack went with her as a carry-on. The other items she had checked into cargo.
    She assessed the